Round and Round We Go

According to Bob Cooney and Phil Jasner (who are apparently getting the scoops this summer in appreciation for the softballs they lobbed at the Sixers all season long), the Sixers are now ready to begin a second round of interviews for their vacant head coach position.

Doug Collins has apparently emerged as the front runner, with Avery Johnson and Sam Mitchell still in the running. Monty Williams is the "wild card."

This has very little to do with how I feel about Collins getting the job, but so much for Stefanski learning his lesson. If Collins is, indeed, the choice, then this year's search will have been a mirror image of last season's. The only thing Stefanski and Co. have done differently is to interview more candidates they had no intention of hiring. They had their guy pegged, interviewed him early, went through the motions with a handful of other guys to keep up appearances, and hired the guy they knew they were going to hire all along.

Anyway, the big takeaway (besides the same old, same old feel to this year's coach search) is that the Sixers appear unwilling to hire an assistant with no head coaching experience. If the first round of interviews is done, I assume Mike Budenholzer won't even get a cursory look. With that in mind, pick your poison below.